I accidentally discovered the perfect houseplant for people who murder houseplants
I thought I had a fake plant for months and cared for it accordingly.
Get yourself one of these babies if you can't keep plants alive.
Confession: I am a houseplant serial killer.
I don't want to be a plant murderer. I adore plants. Greenery is my thing. I'd have a whole house full of lush houseplants if I had any shade of green thumb, but sadly, I do not.
People who know this about me have tried to gift me plants that are supposedly low-maintenance. I can't count how many times I've heard, "Trust me, you can't kill it!" while someone hands me a beautiful plant that I absolutely, positively can and will kill. Yes, even succulents. Even cactus. I can kill anything that grows in dirt. I'm exceptionally skilled at it, in fact.
As a result of this regrettable reality, I have just a few real plants in my home that have miraculously survived my deadly presence over the years. The rest of my plants are fake to satisfy my desire for greenery without triggering my murder shame, which leads me to how I accidentally discovered the perfect houseplant for plant killers like myself.
When I got this plant, it had such perfect leaves, I genuinely thought it was fake.Photo by Annie Reneau
I bought this cute little fake plant some months back thinking it was a fairly realistic dupe. The green color was a little bright, but the dappled effect helped offset the boldness of it. It sat on the shelf in my kitchen next to the window, and I'd occasionally take it down to dust it.
But one time when I took it down, I noticed that the tip of one of the leaves seemed to have a little imperfection in it.
"Huh," I thought. "They really made this thing look real, didn't they? Impressive."
My "fake" plant started drying up on one leaf after months of neglect. Photo by Annie Reneau
Then I pulled back the bottom leaves and saw that there seemed to be real dirt in the pot.
"Huh," I thought. "That's…odd. Why would they bother to use real dirt for a fake plant?"
Then I noticed that there was some dry-looking light brown stuff at the base of the leaves.
"Huh," I thought. "Now, wait a minute…"
Fake plants don't look like this, but I'd never bothered to look underneath the leaves.Photo by Annie Reneau
I ran my fingers over the leaves, which felt waxy and fake and looked nearly perfect. There was no way this was a real plant. I'd had it for months—I don't know how many, but at least two. I had never watered it. Not once. It had remained the same that whole time. The leaves felt like plastic. The green was so very green.
That imperfection at the leaf tip didn't convince me at first because I figured maybe I just hadn't noticed it before. And I didn't want to break off a leaf to check for sure because 1) I didn't want to ruin a perfectly good fake plant and 2) As a bona fide plant murderer, surely my breaking off a leaf would be a bad omen of some sort if it were real.
I took a photo and did a Google image search, and that's when I discovered that what I thought was a fake plant was, in fact, real. A genuine, living plant in real dirt. Barely affected by the months of my outright neglect. Impressive and hardy, despite my absolute best accidental attempt to kill it.
Bird's Nest Snake Plants are the best plants for plant killers.Photo credit: Canva
The Bird's Nest Snake Plant (Sansevieria trifasciata "Hahnii")
Yes, I know, I know. I'm an idiot when it comes to plants. You can see why I kill them so often. But the Bird's Nest Snake Plant is seriously the best plant I've ever had. This is the plant everyone should have been giving me, saying I couldn't kill it. Now that I've started watering it very, very occasionally, it's even started to grow a bit. It's almost like it just sat there in a dormant state for months, not dying but not growing, waiting for me to notice that it was real (part of me wonders if maybe I loved it enough for it to become real—The Velveteen Houseplant, if you will).
Snake plants are succulents, but unlike most succulents, they don't require a lot of sunlight. They do just fine in indirect light, which is why my shelf next to the window seems to work well for mine. Like other succulents, they require little water and the soil should be allowed to dry out completely between waterings.
I thought both of these plants were fake, so they sat here together sharing the neglect.Photo by Annie Reneau
In fact—and this is the best part—they "thrive on neglect." They are drought tolerant and more prone to overwatering than underwatering. Though the recommended watering schedules is every 2-4 weeks, if you forget for longer than that, it's probably not going to hurt it. That was 100% my experience, and yet, it's still as beautifully green as any well-watered normal plant. And it's a good plant for air purifying to boot.
If, like mine, your murderous tendencies are a result of neglect and not overzealous watering, the Bird's Nest Snake Plant might just be your perfect plant, fellow plant killers. You don't even have to know it's real to keep it alive, apparently, which is exactly the kind of plant I need.